Final Reflective Post

1. What did you know about journalism, citizen journalism, and blogging before you took the course?
Before I took the blogging course, my knowledge of journalism, citizen journalism, and blogging was varied. I knew the most about journalism considering I had just taken Writing for Mass Media. Throughout the class I was exposed to just about every topic concerning journalism I could think of. I learned AP Style in writing, the conventions of news, all about different kinds of story and lead structures, about the profession, ethics, etc. I even spent time actually writing articles. I left that class feeling pretty confident that I understood the basics of journalism both as a profession and practice.
Citizen journalism I knew nothing about. I came in to the class with an extremely basic understanding of what it was, and that was only because I had it explained to me during advising when Professor Rakus suggested that I take the class. She told me about a project done on YouTube about citizen journalism where ordinary people put together news pieces for a competition. Based on what I knew about that competition I thought citizen journalism was simply people who weren’t journalists that reporting news.
Blogging I’d had some experience with in the past in two ways. First, I’m an avid reader of Perez Hilton. I knew what he did was a blog, but that’s about all I knew. I’d also had some experience searching around on various established blogs at my internship. However, in both of those cases I really didn’t know anything about blogging as a practice. I took the ones I was engaging with as being nothing particularly different than regular websites. Second, I have personally blogged in the past; I just didn’t know that’s what I was doing. When I was in high school I maintained a livejournal. Livejournal is basically a site that allows users to keep personal journals online. I loved my site and used it frequently but I had no idea at the time that I was blogging. It wasn’t until I took the class that I figured it out.


2. What did you learn about journalism, citizen journalism, and blogging through readings and discussions?
Throughout the course I learned a lot about all three areas. Coming in to the class I felt that I knew most of what there was to know about journalism, but I was wrong. The biggest thing I learned about it throughout the class is that journalism extends beyond just the newspaper. Never once in my four years at Albright had I ever thought of journalism existing anywhere except newspapers and online newspaper sites, broadcast news, and NPR. This class opened my eyes to the fact that anyone can be a reporter. I learned that thanks to blogging not only can anyone be a reporter, anyone can publish what they write on the web to share their news with others. Through readings and class discussion it became clear to me that news happens everywhere and someone from a news organization isn’t always going to be there to cover it. Citizen journalists are becoming popular because technology is giving them the opportunity to share and write news whether they work for a news source or not.

When it comes to citizen journalism, the most important thing I learned was what it was and its increasing prominence on the web. As I said before, until I took this class I had never really heard of citizen journalism and had no idea what it was. Now I fully understand the concept and have even participated in it myself through my assignments. However, I also learned through various reading and discussions that there is a lot of controversy over what constitutes journalism and if citizen journalists are actually engaging in journalism at all. It has become clear that the idea of it is something very new and that all of society has a lot still to learn about it, but I’m glad I was exposed to it enough through the material covered in class that I now know what it is and what goes into it.

As for blogging, I learned that it is more than just people writing about their lives. I came in with the preconceived notion that blogs were just online diaries. I was wrong. I learned the blogs serve many purposes. I also learned that blogs are becoming extremely popular, both in number and their influence. We spent a lot of time this semester reading and discussing the role of blogs in today’s society. Through all of that I learned that blogs are becoming more important in the spread of information and ideas. We discussed how blogs are opening up channels of communication and discussion amongst people in ways they’ve never experienced and how powerful that communication and discussion can be in doing things such as understanding issues, fact checking professionals, etc. Had I not taken this class, I’m sure that I would have continued to be ignorant of the entire blogosphere and been content engaging in just one small part of it.


3. Describe your experience with the hands-on element with a focus on what you learned, the educational value, and the application to the real world.

a. Use of technology
I had a very frustrating experience with the technology in the class. However, I liked the fact that instead of just sitting in a classroom and learning about blogging we were actually doing it and the technology is what made that possible. I think that somewhere down the line when I am out working, knowing how to use Moviemaker, operate a voice recorder, edit audio, and use basic blogging software is going to be very helpful. We’ve learned continually that technology is really becoming a major part of the world of journalism, so it is likely that technical skills are going to be high in demand for people looking for jobs. I think that aspect of the class is going to really help students once they go out into the workforce. Before this class, I had only had to use voice recorders, cameras, and editing software once or twice through my college career. When I did have to use it, I struggled because I was never shown how, and my experience was limited so I never really became comfortable with it. The technological aspect of the class added a lot of value to it in my opinion. It made the class innovative and really showed that the communications track is able to keep up with changing industry trends to really prepare students for work in the real world.

b. Covering stories/events/issues relevant to Albright/Reading Community
I learned a lot when it came to the types of stories I covered. First and foremost, I learned a lot about the issues and events that I was discussing. I felt more comfortable covering issues for my blogs. By doing that I had to contact sources from all over the college that I probably wouldn’t have ever gotten in touch with otherwise. All my sources had so much information to offer that I always walked away knowing more than I did when I went it. I think that was a really cool aspect of the blog assignments, not only were we learning about blogging and citizen journalism but we had to opportunity to learn more about Albright as well. The other big thing I learned was what it must be like to work in the real world of journalism. I’ve always heard that when working in the field you would be assigned to a story and that is what you had to cover or that you would follow a specific beat. The class acted like that by forcing us to cover issues and events pertaining to Albright and the Reading Community. The fact that we were given deadlines and we were not allowed to change topics also added to that professional feeling. I feel like I learned what it would be like for a real journalist.

c. Class Critiques of blogs/podcasts
At first I thought this aspect of the class was really embarrassing. I wasn’t fond of the entire class being able to read/hear/watch my work. I know that’s the point of the class but I still didn’t like it in the beginning. I was used to peers critiquing my work but before this class it had never been a multi-person endeavor and I wasn’t fond of it. However, I feel like I learned a lot from them by the end. When you spend countless hours watching the same video footage or listening to the same audio interview over and over again it becomes hard to pick out the flaws in your own work. I feel like everyone in the class was really respectful of each other’s work and offered really constructive criticisms for each other. I know that I personally took the comments that were directed towards me in class and applied them to future projects to try and improve my work. It was also nice to be able to see the work of others and hear what people had to say about those pieces as well. There were numerous times that we would critique other students work and I would mentally remind myself of what worked in their blogs and to try to improve my own work based on it. I think that the critiques were one of the best parts of the class.

d. Freedom of blogging
I felt like the freedom we got with respect to choosing the topics of our blogs was very consistent with what we would face in the real world. I liked that there were some boundaries because we had to cover something that affects Albright, but that we were given the freedom to choose any topic as within those criteria. I feel that we would face that same type of situation in the real world. If I left school to work for the Philadelphia Inquirer I would have expected to be assigned to some area of news within the Philadelphia area and then given the freedom to find stories that correspond with that assignment.

The only time I felt like our freedom was really compromised was with the fourth hour blogs. I understand that there needed to be other assignments in the class but I felt like when we were assigned specific topics to discuss, they were contradictory with what we were learning about blogging in class. We were always taught that there was so much freedom in blogging. You could talk about whatever you wanted, in however much space you wanted, etc. I feel like the fourth hours were important from an educational standpoint and that they helped to reinforce what was covered in the classroom but I think that they hindered the experience of blogging a little bit. I think the fourth hour assignments should have been removed from the blog and handed in separately to give us an experience that was more in line with what we would experience in a working environment.


4. Discuss what you now think/feel/believe about the role citizen journalism and blogging play in communication. Is blogging a form of journalism?
This class has shown me that the field of journalism is quickly changing. Based on what we’ve covered in class I now believe that the role citizen journalism and blogging are playing is growing quickly. As the world of journalism continues the shift online, blogging is growing in popularity and people are beginning to learn the power of it. We’ve seen many different examples of this throughout the class. We read about how people came together to offer information after a club fire, we read about how bloggers are working together to fact check journalists and make sure they are reporting accurate information, and we read about how technology is making it easier for citizens to capture and report the news without the intervention of the professional news media. It seems to me that as people begin to learn more about blogging and citizen journalism it will continue on the trend of growing and becoming more influential.

As for whether blogging is a form of journalism, I’ve had a hard time all semester trying to answer that question but in the end I feel as though it depends on what is being written. For example, technically, my livejournal from high school is considered a blog, but I would never consider what I wrote in it to be journalism. To fall into that category I feel like a post should follow the typical conventions of news such as timeliness, objectivity, balance, etc. A person should be covering a story fairly and accurately. That being said, I believe that only some blogging is journalism. For example, the posts from YouTube’s Project: Report competition, had they been posted on a blog would certainly constitute journalism because they follow those news conventions. In addition, many news sites, such as nytimes.com, whose business is journalism, also have blogs to report news. Despite the fact that I think some blogging is journalism, I feel that a majority of the blogging done is not journalism. There are countless blogs that are personal and act as someone’s journal or diary online, blogs that just provide a place to aggregate information on various topics, etc.

I also don’t think that for journalism to occur on a blog that the entire blog needs to be devoted specifically to journalism, I believe that it can occur in specific posts. Technology is making it so easy for ordinary people to take pictures or video and write news. What I’ve written in my livejournal in the past was not journalism or news regardless of how you looked at it. However, there is nothing stopping me from going out and covering a story much like I would for the Albrightian or this class. If I did that and posted it on there, I would consider that one specific post to be journalism but not the rest of the content on the site.